BIRN Serbia Hosts Cultural Event on Social Media Impact

BIRN Serbia and Our Endowment: Civil Society House organised a cultural evening in Kragujevac to examine how social media influences and changes people’s lives.

The event on November 20 began with the one-person play ‘Laura, Please’ performed by young actor Nikola Rakocevic, before a public debate about social media’s impact on everyday life.

‘Laura, Please’, produced by group Laura2000, deals with the issues of loneliness and love in the digital age.

After the play, BIRN editor Slobodan Georgiev, radio journalist Miroslav Miletic and marketing and IT expert Anita Pratljacic debated the role of modern technology in society and how traditional media needs to change.

The panelists agreed that there is no place for dialogue in traditional media, and that’s why discussion have thrived on Facebook and Twitter.

For a lot of people Facebook is the internet, and journalists should adapt to that fact, they said.

“Bearing in mind the expansion of fake news, people should be very careful when consuming news on the internet. People need to start checking information that is provided to them,” Georgiev warned.

Pratljacic explained that that traditional media didn’t find the way to adapt to new trends and technologies.

“Although social networks have their bad sides, they can also be the trigger for some good things. They are the place where people communicate and organise in order to bring change to their communities,” she said.

The event, the first of many that will be held all over the Serbia, was supported by Interaktiv and pressek.rs, local organisations from Kragujevac.